Joe Nogood owns a small but thriving gift store. He is middle-aged and he dabbles in stock market and has survived some major crashes in his time. He is an expert on gifts, having learned skills over years. There is only one word to describe him, ordinary.

Joe has been studying internet for months, surveying battlefield, as he calls it. One day, he declared to Stan, his longtime buddy. "The dotcom bubble has bottomed out, I see that we are at beginning of a new uptrend. Let’s build an online store".

Setting up a website is like setting up a business in a foreign land. Joe had to learn foreign language (HTML, XML, PHP, Perl, CGI, Java, CSS, RSS).

The first stage was easy enough. They quickly decided on JoeNoGood.com, it has a counterculture aura around it and a matching slogan as well - We’re Good at JoeNoGood.com.

Registering JoeNoGood.com (domain name), finding a web-hosting company to host his site and finding a credit card processor to handle credit card transactions were simple tasks. There are also some excellent open-source software that, with some basic knowledge, Joe and Stan built their website within two weeks.

The second stage is by far toughest and will need stamina – website marketing and promotion. Having a website is like having a billboard pasted with your messages on an island. Now Joe needs visitors (hits) and bridges (links) to his little island.

When a consumer wants to find a product, 80% of time, this person will use a search engine. Joe’s website has to search-engine friendly - when a search is made for a product or service at JoeNoGood.com, Joe want his website’s page to be in top 20 rankings (top 10 would be ideal). This is Joe’s first-year marketing plan.

Sending 48 Free-Reprint Articles a year

Joe’s marketing plan needs him to write 48 articles a year. He understood that his articles have to be original, informative, entertaining and in plain language. With his buddy during an all-night brainstorming session they agreed on a few ideas.

A Brief History of Gift-Giving would be a good start. Gifts for Positive Response might be another – not corruption, you blockhead, think about a prelude to a marriage proposal or motivating a teenage student to excel in his studies. Romantics may like to read Gifts for Your Love; list goes on and on.

Perhaps, a possible topic may be Gift-Receiving Habits of Bushmen Americans, ones concentrated in D.C. area. Bushmen use strange language like "I wish to caveat my response" which is hardly understandable by public. A follow-up article like Bushmen Gifts – Impact on Iraq’s Economy may provide scholarly reputation for Joe, a must-read for think tanks around world.

Publishing 4 Free E-books a year

Since Joe wrote an article a week, within three months, he will have enough material for an e-book. Knowing hassles, he decides on a commercial website that can convert his articles into an EXE and PDF format and submit this free-for-download e-book to various depositories on his behalf.

Naturally, since this e-book is free, Joe inserted some messages on his products and services in a non-intrusive manner. Joe thought – an e-book-cum-catalog, what a clever idea. He wants to persuade without using ways used by in-your-face marketers. Joe wants his readers to know and believe he is true to his chosen slogan.

On publishing his first e-book and seeing a growing readership, Joe called his printers and ordered a fresh set of new name cards – Joe Nogood, Owner-Internet Writer-Author. Stan sensed a distinct glow about Joe’s demeanor since that moment.

Direct Mail – Don’t Assume, Just Test And Track

Written by Joy Gendusa

Where to Start:

Most novice marketers have definite fixed ideas about direct mail that are way off base - most often in area of what to spend and how much to do. You should determine what you are able to spend for your marketing budget, spend it, and determine maximum number of leads that you can create. For instance, I’ve heard this statement quite often: "We aren’t that large of a company. How could we send out 2,000 postcards all at once?" because "What if they all call?" – seems like a valid concern, right?

Here is reality behind it: Unfortunately they won’t all call. However, a good deal of them very well may and making sure that your traffic in is not more than you can handle is something to think about. Truthfully, there is no sure way to tell exactly how many people will call if you haven’t done this type of marketing before. Think of it this way. What would happen if they did all call? You may not be able to handle all of them, but you would handle as many as you possibly could, right?

In this scenario, you would have maximized your income for that time period providing you could close up all those callers! You can also explore idea of expanding your operation to handle number of leads that you can create.

What if you didn’t max out your promotion at very start? You can afford to send out 4,000 pieces every two weeks but you think that you will simply get too many calls to be able to handle them all. You, instead, send out only 2,000 and response is decent. However, you still have some down time where you are having to try to “manufacture” sales.

You saved $400 in marketing money but you had enough down time where you could have closed quite a few more sales than you did. The question now is "Which gives me more money in my pocket? Saving $400 on marketing or closing quite a few more sales and earning an extra couple of G’s potentially.” More than likely answer is to spend as much as you possibly can on your marketing, right?

By spending all that you can afford on marketing when you start a program you maximize your income almost immediately.